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Hunter brothers run London Knights as a family affair

Mark and Dale Hunter share a special bond running the London Knights, the jewel of the Ontario Hockey League.

Mark Hunter (right, with nephew Dylan Hunter), GM, coach and co-owner with brother Dale of the OHL's London Knights, has his team two wins away from a berth in the Memorial Cup. (Courtesy OHL Images)

By Kevin McGranSports Reporter

Tues., May 8, 2012

LONDON, ONT.—Dylan Hunter pauses for a second when he sees his Uncle Mark talking on the phone in his office at the John Labatt Centre.

“I always laugh because I know when he’s talking to dad on the phone,” says Dylan Hunter, son of Dale Hunter. “They have the one-word answers, going back and forth real quick, like rapid fire. They have an interesting relationship. They feed off each other.”

Mark and Dale Hunter — two farming brothers from Petrolia, Ont., who made it big in the NHL — co-own and run the London Knights, the jewel franchise of the Ontario Hockey League.

Dale, of course, was the team’s long-time coach, but moved on in mid-season to coach the Washington Capitals, one of the NHL teams he played for. Speculation persists that Dale will return to the Knights as early as next season.

Mark, the Knights’ long-serving GM, took over as coach and has his team up two games to one in the OHL final against the Niagara IceDogs, just two wins away from a berth in the Memorial Cup.

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“I enjoy it,” says Mark Hunter. “Right now there’s lots on the plate. It’s been fun winning. Coaching is great when you’re winning. Coaching is no fun when you’re losing. I don’t like losing much.

“I enjoy the managing. I like to develop and find hockey players and see a team come together as a team and get the right ingredients.”

Mark’s not sure what Dale’s plans are beyond this season. He will say he’s surprised it took this long for an NHL team to come calling for his brother. Dale’s .680 winning percentage in the OHL for the better part of 11 seasons (481-212-55) is right up there with Ken Hitchcock’s .690 (291-125-15) over a six-year run with Kamloops in the 1980s.

It’s no surprise that Dale Hunter preaches the same shot-blocking, defence-first mentality with the Capitals that he did with the Knights. And Alex Ovechkin and Alexander Semin are finding out what the likes of Nazem Kadri and Patrick Kane learned as Knights — that you get benched if you don’t play the way Dale wants you to play.

“I was surprised some other team wasn’t talking to him about coaching in the NHL before the Capitals,” says Mark Hunter. “The comeback is he had great players, but you have to make the great players play the right way. He gets his team to play as a team.”

Prior to the Hunters buying them in 2000, the Knights earned the monicker the Knightmares locally for a run of horrible years that included one three-win season in the mid-1990s.

But the Hunters, it turns out, had the magic touch. Through better scouting and recruiting and a grassroots campaign of bringing players into schools and hospitals, the city of London fell back in love their Knights.

The 9,000-seat John Labatt Centre was sold out, as it often is, for Game 3 of the OHL final.

“Hockey in this town is so huge, you can’t believe it,” says Barbara Costello, marketing director for White Oaks Mall, one of the Knights’ chief sponsors. “Folks here look at the Hunter brothers like they’ve given them the greatest gift in the world. The John Labatt Centre is full all the time, all the games. The energy it creates is amazing.”

With a season-ticket base of 7,000 and a walk-up price of $18 for a regular-season game ($32 for the final), there are more than a handful of NHL teams in the U.S. Sunbelt that would love to have the connection to their communities that the Hunters and the Knights enjoy with London.

The team has nine main “sponsors” and 92 “corporate partners” listed on its website.

The hold the Knights have on London’s hockey community is a lot like the hold the Maple Leafs have on their fan base, says Nazem Kadri, the Toronto Marlie who grew up in London and played for the Knights.

“Every single year they put a quality product on the ice that always seems to find a way to win. Fans can’t stay away. The fan support is huge,” says Kadri. “The pressures of playing in London . . . it’s a mini-scale Toronto.”

The Knights have a run of recent success that would make Leaf fans jealous. They won the Memorial Cup in 2005 and have been back to the OHL final on one other occasion (they lost). They have sent more No. 1 draft picks (five) to the NHL than any other team. And they haven’t had a losing season since 2001-02, when Dale took over behind the bench for the first time.

While the hockey/farming Sutter brothers get a lot of ink for their success in Alberta, the Hunters fly somewhat under the radar running a similar program in Ontario.

But players want to play for the Hunters because they run such a successful organization. They teach using video from NHL games, so players can learn from the best. The Hunters know what it takes to make it in the NHL and they’re doing their best to pass that information along.

“They’ve helped me grow as a hockey player,” said Knights defenceman Jarred Tinordi, whose father Mark was a teammate of Dale’s in Washington. “They taught me the pro style of the game and helped prepared me for training camp. They tell us what to expect, what to do. When I got to training camp (with the Montreal Canadiens), it was just like they said.

“They filled the organization with quality people. That’s what matters most — they get you ready for the next level of pro hockey.”

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